Adam, another shipment please. The box is on my desk, the address is:
Universidad Nacional Agraria
Departamento de Protección Agrícola y Forestal
Kilometro 12½ carretera norte, Managua, Nicaragua
Apartado postal: 453
Destinatario: Arnulfo Monzón Centeno
Teléfono: 505 2263 2609
Thank you!
Adam,
When you get to it, please send PINNED specimens of the following species:
Dendroctonus frontalis
Dendroctonus terebrans
Myoplatypus flavicornis
Ips grandicollis
Euwallacea interjectus
Xyleborus glabratus
Xyleborinus saxesenii
Gnathotrichus materiarius
Anisandrus sayi
to this person:
No.32, Xihu Rd., Dali Dist., Taichung City 412, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Tsau-Hu Elementary School
臺中市大里區412西湖路32號
You can see if there are long series of those in the pinned collection. If not (most likely) pull out some from our freezer (vials with many of them from the same location) and pin them. Ideally, use samples from Alligator River, NC, since they are not good for DNA analysis. I can show you how to locate stuff like that in the database. Thank you! This is for a colleague in Taiwan who has been sending us study material from there.
Also please extract DNA from muscles of Xyleborus horridus from Honduras (Caroline’s stuff).
Adam,
We received about 30 beetle samples from a collaborator in Italy, they are in a box in the lab freezer. Some of them are very important, please stop by and I will explain. I would like you to do two things with them:
1) Incorporate them into our database and our -80 freezer: record the samples into the database (see spreadsheet in an email), put new labels in, write our vial numbers on the tubes (side and top), and put them in the freezer.
2) Choose ONE well-preserved specimen of Xyleborus eurygraphus from one of three vials that contain it and extract DNA from it. Use either the Qiagen protocol for tissues or the new OmniPrep (should be slightly better). The extract will then be amplified with three primer pairs that you get from Caroline, for a phylogenetic study that she is doing. Before you do that, I will show you how to record a DNA extraction event and a PCR event into the database.
Adam,
Here is a summary of what we talked about, plus a few more things that i need your help with:
– list of most common tree/forest pests in FL and insecticides approved for them
– get a black twig borer ASAP and isolate fungi from it for Polly’s experiment
New things:
– please pull together a small collection of beetles for an extension event: Xyleborus glabratus, Xylosandrus crassiusculus, Dendroctonus frontalis, Dendroctonus terebrans. Make LAAARGE labels for them (in plain English), put them in a specimen mailing box, and ship them to:
Gabrielle Milch
UF-IFAS Extension at Seminole County
250 W. County Home Rd.
Sanford, FL 32773-6197
– please mail the framed beetle collection in my student’s office to:
Greg Dunn
Florida Forest Service
3125 Agriculture Center Drive
St. Augustine, Florida 32092
…please pack it carefully, it’s glass…
– get to Archbold
– plan a trip to Austin
– make and updated list of Cryphalini classification
– measure the amount of DNA in a single individual of a small cryphaline (use OmniPrep, MoBio, Qiagen, and Ex-n-Amp to compare).
– assemble all sequences currently available for Cryphalini (GenBank, BOLD, Jordal, Cognato)
A couple more things:
The #3 Send ’em in will also have a movie box.
Right side of the map:
– title “More interesting stuff here:”
– topics:
–What is this project all about, anyway?
–Why do beetles
–What are these “bark beetles”?: These beetles are much more that just what the name says: yes, many live in bark, but many also live inside trees and grow gardens of fungi for food (those are called ambrosia beetles). Many live in a strange family system with one brother an many sisters that have babies together. Several species are the world’s most destructive forest pests which, withe help of climate change, are turning Canada into grasslands. Want o know more? Click on the species that you trapped on the map, or visit our website: www.ambrosiasymbiosis.org.
–Several cool beetle species:
—the redbay ambrosia beetle, a foreigner from Asia that’s destroying Florida’s forests and the avocado industry: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in886
—the Southern Pine Beetle: a native pest that once used to kill thousands of acres of pines yearly (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in333) but now it is a rare insect!
—the granulated ambrosia beetle: the most common beetle in your trap is probably not a native insect, but this invader from Asia: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in288
Polly,
There is an empty box with vials by the printer. could you please fill it up with cryovials 3/4 full of ethanol? Thank you!
J.
Polly, the address of the Clerid guys is here:
Justin Bartlett
Qld Primary Industries Insect Collection
DAFF Biosecurity Queensland
Level 2C East – Ecosciences Precinct
GPO Box 267
Brisbane Qld 4001
Australia
phone: 07 3255 4357
Please send it via regular mail – I don’t think you will need a project number for that.
The beetles that will go to the synoptic collections will be pinned, but don’t do it yet. As we discussed today, we may need to re-organize our collection first. For now, put them all in ethanol. You don’t even have to identify them right now. Sorting the backlog is a higher priority.
Thank you!
Tings to look into on the otherwise awesome site (i’m looking at it in Chrome):
– mouse arrow disappears when touching links
– can the tabs “Join project” etc be numbered 1 to 3?
– the MAP YOUR BEETLES” should perhaps be “4: AND SEE WHAT LIVES IN YOUR BACKYARD” I just really want it to be a clear sequence of steps towards the map.
Bottle trap:
– replace ethanol with “Purell alcohol-based hand sanitizer”
– the tab “catch beetles” disappears after a while
– Supplies: soda bottle (2 liter), hand sanitizer (alcohol-based, Purell is best), string, paint brush, small ziploc bag, padded envelope for shipping
– the link to the printable PDF is a good idea, but a heads up: we will have to use a different one that reflects this simpler method, based on hand sanitizer. Good for now though…
The lower field, that contains the map:
– Can the map be big? I mean as big as is convenient/possible? Ideally across 2/3 or 3/4 of that field.
– The remaining portion of that field should have the heading “What is this project about” that’s good. And I think underneath that we will have to include a couple of educational or explanatory items, or links to them. For example, on of them should be: Why do beetles fall into hand sanitizer? The explanation is: “When a tree dies, the process of wood degradation produces alcohol. Because bark and ambrosia beetles evolved attraction to alcohol, because need to find dead trees to reproduce. Hand sanitizers contain lots of alcohol, and that’s we can use them to attract bark beetles!” Should we make a pop-up? Or some other type or short paragraph-type records? There will be more of those…
(c) 2013 Ambrosia Symbiosis Lab Protocols
